Press Release

For release at 2:00 p.m. EST

The Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Open Market Committee on Wednesday released the attached minutes of the Committee meeting held on December 15-16, 2009.

The minutes for each regularly scheduled meeting of the Committee ordinarily are made available three weeks after the day of the policy decision and subsequently are published in the Board's Annual Report. The description of economic and financial conditions contained in these minutes is based solely on the information that was available to the Committee at the time of the meeting.